Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
SPOILER ALERT
I've recently re-watched the 2007 animated family comedy film "Bee Movie," starring Jerry Seinfeld and Renee Zellweger. If you're not aware, it's about a bee who discovers that honey is sold by and for humans, for-profit. He becomes outraged because the bees do all that work and the whole time they had no idea the product of their labor was being stolen and appropriated by a separate class of living-organism.
This bee, Barry Benson, becomes class-conscious and successfully sues the human race for their violations against bee-kind, with the real kicker being the unethical treatment of bees in factory-farms owned by businesses that sell honey.
So, the bees have essentially seized the means of production. All the honey they make now belongs to them, and they may distribute it how they please.
Here's where "Bee Movie" becomes capitalist propaganda, in my view.
In the capitalist opinion, what happens when true equality has been achieved in the form of communism? Well, everyone becomes lazy of course. The bees now have access to a vast amount of honey (wealth) that they've produced over the years, so now they're too lazy to go out and pollinate the flowers, leading to an Earth effectively without bees. Communism has made them lazy, and now the world is beginning to suffer. I'm not too well-versed in botany and biology and stuff like that so I don't know exactly what would happen if all the honeybees went away, but I'm sure it wouldn't be pretty.
Barry recognizes this problem, goes out and finds the human he's become friends with, and together they track down the last flowers on Earth(?) so that the bees can re-pollinate the world and make everything good again. The bees manage to cooperate with the humans by saving a plane from crashing with their collective bee power.
When they recognize that the world will end if honey can no longer be bought and sold for profit, they reach a compromise with the humans that allows bees to feel motivated to pollinate the flowers, allows humans to continue selling honey, and ensures ethical treatment of bees in the process. Exploitative and hierarchical, but good enough, because removing profit incentives just makes everyone lazy.
I know this is probably reaching. After all, it's a kids' movie. How much thought could have really been put into it?
But, it really seems to perpetuate this individualist pro-capitalist narrative that — for some reason — uses bees as a symbol for exploited laborers/slaves that gain class-consciousness, successfully overthrow the oppressive system, become lazy (of course), and reach compromise with the bourgeoisie that re-establishes a relationship of exploitation, because apparently true freedom and equality makes everyone complacent and lazy.
Do you agree with my long-winded analysis? Can comrades still appreciate this ridiculous-ass-movie as the huge meme it has become? Does yogurt night always have to be so difficult? so... it is.